Turning agave fibers into paper

Alberto Valenzuela wanted to create a distinctly Oaxacan paper, using local materials rather than simply reproducing European traditions. He eventually found his material in agave, the plant linked to mezcal, after experimenting with banana fibers, corn, hibiscus and pineapples from Loma Bonita.

“As there is Fabriano, Arches and Guarro paper, I wanted paper made from leaves from here, Oaxacan paper,” Valenzuela says. His workshop is in San Agustín Etla, Oaxaca, where he continues developing paper from agave fibers.

Finnish papermakers who arrived in Oaxaca taught him how to make European paper. The experience left him eager to explore other kinds of fibers. An important figure in that process was Juan Alcázar, a major Oaxacan visual artist who exchanged some of his paintings in Finland for papermaking machines.

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As there is Fabriano, Arches and Guarro paper, I wanted paper made from leaves from here, Oaxacan paper.

“Then Juan arrived with the machines, the Finnish advice, and that was it. Then we started working,” Valenzuela recalls. He describes the people and influences that crossed his life as figures that met, talked and helped build new realities.

His interest in paper also grew through family. When his teenage son began pulling away from him, Valenzuela proposed a manual activity, and they began recycling paper together. His story, he says, is shaped by a traveling father, a mother from the Papaloapan Basin who loved music, and the childhood images of rivers and women’s dresses filled with butterflies.

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Then Juan arrived with the machines, the Finnish advice, and that was it. Then we started working.